2,816 research outputs found
Derivation of quantitative management objectives for annual instream water temperatures in the Sabie River using a biological index
Adaptive management of river systems assumes uncertainty and makes provision for system variability. Inherent within this management approach is that perceived limits of 'acceptable' system variability are regarded not only as testable hypotheses, but also as playing a central role in maintaining biodiversity. While the Kruger National Park currently functions as a flagship conservation area in South Africa, projected increases in air temperatures as a consequence of global climate change present challenges in conserving this biodiversity inside the established land boundaries. Within the rivers of the Kruger National Park, a management goal of maintaining biodiversity requires a clearer understanding of system variability. One component of this is water temperature, an important water quality parameter defining the distribution patterns of aquatic organisms. In this study, Chiloglanis anoterus Crass (1960) (Pisces: Mochokidae) was selected as a biological indicator of changes in annual water temperatures within the Sabie River in the southern Kruger National Park. Relative abundances of C. anoterus were determined using standard electro-fishing surveys. The presence or absence of C. anoterus was linked to cumulative annual heat units using a logistic regression model, and a critical annual cumulative water temperature threshold estimated. A correlative relationship between this temperature threshold and a biological index using a C. anoterus condition factor provides river ecologists with a tool to assess ecologically significant warming trends in Sabie River water temperatures. A similar approach could be applied with relative ease to other Southern African river systems. Further testing of this hypothesis is suggested, as part of the adaptive management cycle
Direct visualization of aging in colloidal glasses
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the dynamics of aging
colloidal glasses. We prepare a colloidal suspension at high density, a simple
model system which shares many properties with other glasses, and initiate
experiments by stirring the sample. We follow the motion of several thousand
colloidal particles after the stirring and observe that their motion
significantly slows as the sample ages. The aging is both spatially and
temporally heterogeneous. Furthermore, while the characteristic relaxation time
scale grows with the age of the sample, nontrivial particle motions continue to
occur on all time scales.Comment: submitted to proceedings for Liquid Matter Conference 200
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Providing immediate neonatal care and resuscitation at birth beside the mother: parents' views, a qualitative study
Objectives: The aims of this study were to assess parents’ views of immediate neonatal care and resuscitation at birth being provided beside the mother, and their experiences of a mobile trolley designed to facilitate this bedside care.
Design: Qualitative study with semistructured interviews. Results were analysed using thematic analysis.
Setting: Large UK maternity hospital.
Participants: Mothers whose baby received initial neonatal care in the first few minutes of life at the bedside, and their birth partners, were eligible. 30 participants were interviewed (19 mothers, 10 partners and 1 grandmother). 5 babies required advanced neonatal resuscitation.
Results: 5 themes were identified: (1) Reassurance, which included ‘Baby is OK’, ‘Having baby close’, ‘Confidence in care’, ‘Knowing what's going on’ and ‘Dad as informant’; (2) Involvement of the family, which included ‘Opportunity for contact’, ‘Family involvement’ and ‘Normality’; (3) Staff communication, which included ‘Communication’ and ‘Experience’; (4) Reservations, which included ‘Reservations about witnessing resuscitation’, ‘Negative emotions’ and ‘Worries about the impact on staff’ and (5) Experiences of the trolley, which included ‘Practical issues’ and ‘Comparisons with standard resuscitation equipment’.
Conclusions: Families were positive about neonatal care being provided at the bedside, and felt it gave reassurance about their baby's health and care. They also reported feeling involved as a family. Some parents reported experiencing negative emotions as a result of witnessing resuscitation of their baby. Parents were positive about the trolley
The Physics of the Colloidal Glass Transition
As one increases the concentration of a colloidal suspension, the system
exhibits a dramatic increase in viscosity. Structurally, the system resembles a
liquid, yet motions within the suspension are slow enough that it can be
considered essentially frozen. This kinetic arrest is the colloidal glass
transition. For several decades, colloids have served as a valuable model
system for understanding the glass transition in molecular systems. The spatial
and temporal scales involved allow these systems to be studied by a wide
variety of experimental techniques. The focus of this review is the current
state of understanding of the colloidal glass transition. A brief introduction
is given to important experimental techniques used to study the glass
transition in colloids. We describe features of colloidal systems near and in
glassy states, including tremendous increases in viscosity and relaxation
times, dynamical heterogeneity, and ageing, among others. We also compare and
contrast the glass transition in colloids to that in molecular liquids. Other
glassy systems are briefly discussed, as well as recently developed synthesis
techniques that will keep these systems rich with interesting physics for years
to come.Comment: 56 pages, 18 figures, Revie
Kob-Andersen model: a non-standard mechanism for the glassy transition
We present new results reflecting the analogies between the Kob-Andersen
model and other glassy systems. Studying the stability of the blocked
configurations above and below the transition we also give arguments that
supports their relevance for the glassy behaviour of the model.
However we find, surprisingly, that the organization of the phase space of
the system is different from the well known organization of other mean-field
spin glasses and structural glasses.Comment: New reference added and one update
Nonergodicity transitions in colloidal suspensions with attractive interactions
The colloidal gel and glass transitions are investigated using the idealized
mode coupling theory (MCT) for model systems characterized by short-range
attractive interactions. Results are presented for the adhesive hard sphere and
hard core attractive Yukawa systems. According to MCT, the former system shows
a critical glass transition concentration that increases significantly with
introduction of a weak attraction. For the latter attractive Yukawa system, MCT
predicts low temperature nonergodic states that extend to the critical and
subcritical region. Several features of the MCT nonergodicity transition in
this system agree qualitatively with experimental observations on the colloidal
gel transition, suggesting that the gel transition is caused by a low
temperature extension of the glass transition. The range of the attraction is
shown to govern the way the glass transition line traverses the phase diagram
relative to the critical point, analogous to findings for the fluid-solid
freezing transition.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures; to be published in Phys. Rev. E (1 May 1999
The spectral action and cosmic topology
The spectral action functional, considered as a model of gravity coupled to
matter, provides, in its non-perturbative form, a slow-roll potential for
inflation, whose form and corresponding slow-roll parameters can be sensitive
to the underlying cosmic topology. We explicitly compute the non-perturbative
spectral action for some of the main candidates for cosmic topologies, namely
the quaternionic space, the Poincare' dodecahedral space, and the flat tori. We
compute the corresponding slow-roll parameters and see we check that the
resulting inflation model behaves in the same way as for a simply-connected
spherical topology in the case of the quaternionic space and the Poincare'
homology sphere, while it behaves differently in the case of the flat tori. We
add an appendix with a discussion of the case of lens spaces.Comment: 55 pages, LaTe
Vortex jamming in superconductors and granular rheology
We demonstrate that a highly frustrated anisotropic Josephson junction
array(JJA) on a square lattice exhibits a zero-temperature jamming transition,
which shares much in common with those in granular systems. Anisotropy of the
Josephson couplings along the horizontal and vertical directions plays roles
similar to normal load or density in granular systems. We studied numerically
static and dynamic response of the system against shear, i. e. injection of
external electric current at zero temperature. Current-voltage curves at
various strength of the anisotropy exhibit universal scaling features around
the jamming point much as do the flow curves in granular rheology, shear-stress
vs shear-rate. It turns out that at zero temperature the jamming transition
occurs right at the isotropic coupling and anisotropic JJA behaves as an exotic
fragile vortex matter : it behaves as superconductor (vortex glass) into one
direction while normal conductor (vortex liquid) into the other direction even
at zero temperature. Furthermore we find a variant of the theoretical model for
the anisotropic JJA quantitatively reproduces universal master flow-curves of
the granular systems. Our results suggest an unexpected common paradigm
stretching over seemingly unrelated fields - the rheology of soft materials and
superconductivity.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. To appear in New Journal of Physic
A diagrammatic formulation of the kinetic theory of fluctuations in equilibrium classical fluids. VI. Binary collision approximations for the memory function for self correlation functions
We use computer simulation results for a dense Lennard-Jones fluid for a
range of temperatures to test the accuracy of various binary collision
approximations for the memory function for density fluctuations in liquids. The
approximations tested include the moderate density approximation of the
generalized Boltzmann-Enskog memory function (MGBE) of Mazenko and Yip, the
binary collision approximation (BCA) and the short time approximation (STA) of
Ranganathan and Andersen, and various other approximations derived by us using
diagrammatic methods. The tests are of twotypes. The first is a comparison of
the correlation functions predicted by each approximate memory function with
the simulation results, especially for the self longitudinal current
correlation function (SLCC). The second is a direct comparison of each
approximate memory function with a memory function numerically extracted from
the correlation function data. The MGBE memory function is accurate at short
times but decays to zero too slowly and gives a poor description of the
correlation function at intermediate times. The BCA is exact at zero time, but
it predicts a correlation function that diverges at long times. The STA gives a
reasonable description of the SLCC but does not predict the correct temperature
dependence of the negative dip in the function that is associated with caging
at low temperatures. None of the other binary collision approximations is a
systematic improvement upon the STA. The extracted memory functions have a
rapidly decaying short time part, much like the STA, and a much smaller, more
slowly decaying part of the type predicted by mode coupling theory. Theories
that use mode coupling commonly include a binary collision term in the memory
function but do not discuss in detail the nature of that term. ...Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Phase Separation of Crystal Surfaces: A Lattice Gas Approach
We consider both equilibrium and kinetic aspects of the phase separation
(``thermal faceting") of thermodynamically unstable crystal surfaces into a
hill--valley structure. The model we study is an Ising lattice gas for a simple
cubic crystal with nearest--neighbor attractive interactions and weak
next--nearest--neighbor repulsive interactions. It is likely applicable to
alkali halides with the sodium chloride structure. Emphasis is placed on the
fact that the equilibrium crystal shape can be interpreted as a phase diagram
and that the details of its structure tell us into which surface orientations
an unstable surface will decompose. We find that, depending on the temperature
and growth conditions, a number of interesting behaviors are expected. For a
crystal in equilibrium with its vapor, these include a low temperature regime
with logarithmically--slow separation into three symmetrically--equivalent
facets, and a higher temperature regime where separation proceeds as a power
law in time into an entire one--parameter family of surface orientations. For a
crystal slightly out of equilibrium with its vapor (slow crystal growth or
etching), power--law growth should be the rule at late enough times. However,
in the low temperature regime, the rate of separation rapidly decreases as the
chemical potential difference between crystal and vapor phases goes to zero.Comment: 16 pages (RevTex 3.0); 12 postscript figures available on request
([email protected]). Submitted to Physical Review E. SFU-JDSDJB-94-0
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